Monday, September 06, 2004

Give me a line! I want to get on it.

Since internet and World[Wild]Web became a daily obsession for the young hungry portion of Iranian population, dating with opposite sex became easier than ever in that country unlike my time in 80s and early 90s. Once upon a time in those dark years of Hush! Don’t say I love you or I kill you!, I was walking my girl friend -- who became my wife later on and became my ex-wife later than later on -- to her uncle's apartment around 10:00 pm. We were passing through a park, holding hands and whispering L-word in one another's ear, all of a freaking-terrifying-shocking sudden two 15 year old boys with the unofficial militia uniforms of Basiji forces ran towards us from two different directions and got really close to us and pointed their hand guns at us. We both were totally shocked and terrified. I got rid of them with an old stupid cliché trick which was popular back then and nothing serious happened but that night we had fear branded on our foreheads and on our souls. Now it's different. Same regime, same rules, but different life style. Dating is easy nowadays. Boys and girls meet and chat first in a public/private cyber room, some of them even do their foreplay in the room or their PM and then set up a date in one of the coffee shops in town -- and when I say town I don't mean just Tehran, this is happening in most major cities now. I haven't been in Iran since year 2000 but I've tried to keep myself up to date with news, life style and pop culture, what is hot and what is not, even today’s slang -- which by the way is changing so fast these days, it's hard to catch up. In last couple of weeks I've been in different Iranian chat rooms, I've noticed that it's getting harder and harder to make a simple adult conversation in those rooms. Guys don't want to waste their time chatting with a guy, girls; not all but many of them, don't want to waste da time on regular chat, they want cyber sex or an actual date in couple of hours if you happen living in same town, and some are looking for a man who lives in abroad and wants to get married to an Iranian girl. The other day a friend of mine was telling me that he was chatting with a 23 years old sophisticated prostitute on internet. She was a professional, she claimed having a lot of rich customers and she met some of them in internet. This generation is utilizing a medium to express, to live and to share. The other night I logged into a chat room and sat there and watched. They were talking about cyber sex, rock music and marijuana. It felt like 60s. Sex, drug and Rock'n Roll.